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Avaliação Psicológica

Print version ISSN 1677-0471On-line version ISSN 2175-3431

Abstract

NATIVIDADE, Jean Carlos; BARROS, Mônica Colognese  and  HUTZ, Claudio Simon. The influence of adjectives gender flexion in psychological instruments in portuguese. Aval. psicol. [online]. 2012, vol.11, n.2, pp. 259-264. ISSN 1677-0471.

The objective of this research was to verify the influence of gender flexion of adjectives as personality descriptors in the characterization of women and men. Participants were 270 people divided into two groups with distinct experimental tasks, but with similar demographic characteristics. In the first task participants evaluated how well adjectives flexed in the feminine form described typical women and men. The other task was identical, but the adjectives were flexed in the masculine form. The responses of both groups were compared and the effect of gender flexion was noticed in the characterization of women and men. Adjectives flexed in feminine were considered more representatives of women and the opposite occurred for the same adjectives flexed in masculine form. It is suggested that gender flexion of terms used in psychological instruments may interfere in the endorsement of items as a function of respondents’ gender and compromise the validity of tests.

Keywords : psychological tests; test construction; personality measures.

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